My Personal Myth Revisited

I define a personal myth as a coherent story you tell yourself about the purpose of your life. Calling it a myth is a useful construct because no one in real life acts one way consistently. After all, we’re human not software.

So, to arrive at a story about ourselves that has coherence we have to sort through the facts and arrive at a perception that generally fits. This requires smoothing over edges, a certain amount of fooling ourselves. Identifying patterns despite exceptions.

I’m not saying we should allow ourselves to be Fooled by Randomness about material matters like investing.¹ However, when it comes to life, I’ll stick with Joan Didion’s great line, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

When I retired from my finance career four years ago (I was then sixty), I did not have a coherent story to tell myself. I’d had a successful career and I loved my family. Now the kids were grown and my career was done. I really didn’t know what ought to come next.

I was disturbed by the thought that my life had been determined by chance of birth and a few strokes of great and random luck—a marriage for life and a lucrative career. If my life had been subservient to forces over which I’d had little control, then my own contributions were stripped of meaning. See my post In Search of Moral Justification For My Wealth in the footnote. ²

After retirement from finance, I tried out being an economic advisor to government but that didn’t last long. I loved the analysis—learn everything about a state’s finances, pretend you’re the owner, and suggest the best budget. But once the actual governing started with all its inevitable compromises and messiness, I quickly learned it wasn’t for me.

At the same time, in 2022, I started writing this Substack. One of my very first posts was to explore the idea of a personal myth.

My 2022 Post

At the time, I’d been reading Anthony Powell’s series of twelve connected novels, A Dance to the Music of Time.³ One of the characters, General Conyers, a man wise with the lived experience of his 80 years tells the narrator that

“…if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.”

The General’s myth might be “I served my country well” or “I always acted with the honour of a soldier.” I thought of the General’s myth as his shield against facing his mortality.

The General’s line stayed with me and so I began wrestling with this idea of a “personal myth.” And coveting one for myself.

The Cumean Sybil; Michelangelo, The Sistine Chapel. Powell’s narrator compares General Conyers to the Sybil, with a mustache added.

Trying on a myth in 2022

In my 2022 post I wrote the below, in italics:

The myth that seems to appeal to me most is based on a certain smallness, a certain circumscribing of my chosen fields of battle. Discrete instances of making a positive difference. Family and friends, obviously.

But also, this happened early this morning in a village street. I stopped and had a conversation with a stranger who seemed lonely and in need of someone to talk to about the children’s book he said he was writing. That was a small win.

One of my sons once heard a business cliché from a former boss. “You win by winning.” At the time, this seemed to my son like the silliest type of meaningless corporate doublespeak. But, a year or so later, while running his own company, he gleaned the wisdom of what his boss had said and passed it on to me.

No success or victory is too small to be insignificant. Each interaction with a customer, a vendor, or a fellow employee is an opportunity for a “win.” It is these small wins that are the surest path to overall winning.

I suppose my writing this Substack is one way I’m trying to achieve a few small wins. If I can provide value of some sort or be useful to a few people through my writing, then those are a series of small wins. Certainly nothing grand, perhaps evanescent, but not meaningless.

Four years later

What I wrote in 2022 was tentative. I’m not sure I believed it. My language was hesitant--“seems to appeal,” “trying to achieve a few small wins,” “perhaps evanescent.” And then there’s the anecdote of my talking to the village stranger, a kind act but hardly an act upon which to build a myth.

Now, four years later, I feel that my myth has solidified. I spend much of my time looking after and helping others. Being a decent person.

It’s not the myth of a hero or a charismatic leader or the creator of anything legendary. It’s simply taking advantage of opportunities to commit numerous acts of kindness and love, some small, some larger.

As well, I no longer think it matters whether my myth is based on my initial circumstances and the random strands of my life. I’ve finally let go of this impossible to untangle knot. See my post Self-Evident Truths Get Smacked Down By Reality in the footnote.⁴

The role of this Substack

My Substack adventure has played an important role in my myth. I’ve written my way through from an initial tentative assertion into a substantive framework of my life.

As important, I hope and believe that my writing has provided, here and there, some kindnesses to my readers through emotional and intellectual connection and stimulation.

This is now the story I tell myself about myself. I believe it, it urges me on, and it gives me relief, most of the time, from feelings of meaningless and dread.

Question for the comments: Is a personal myth a valid goal or is it a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?”

1. Nassim Taleb’s best selling book Fooled By Randomness argues that most of us are consistently finding patterns in markets and in life where no patterns exist. It’s a good book. But for something far more authoritative on the same topic and without Taleb’s edgy tone, I recommend Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.

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3. Dance to the Music of Time is an ambitious but addictive reading project of some 3,000 pages. Once described as if Proust had been translated by P.G. Wodehouse.

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